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Web Traffic For Those Who Just Started Out

Web traffic is simply the number of visitors to your website. It does not necessary mean that they read your content, but at least they happen to reach any of your web pages. For webmasters or site owners who have legitimate businesses, traffic is very important, like it is the lifeblood of their online presence. The more people that visit your site, the more exposed your products or services. Traffic is also very important to bloggers who are monetizing their sites. More visits, more clicks on ads, bigger chances of getting expensive reviews, etc…

But what about the personal bloggers and those who are not into blog monetization? First, you have to ask yourself: Why do I need web traffic? If you have don’t have a ready answer for that, let me share to you some of my thoughts.

Socialization

Humans are social beings. That’s a given. Sometimes, the motivation to blog comes from friends (online or offline). He blogs, she blogs, they blog, then you should blog too. You read their blogs, and hope they read yours. Their friends become your friends. Yours becomes theirs. They link, you link. They join this, you join that. You may not write frequently, but since you visit and leave comments on plenty of sites each day, it is more likely that you will get a return visit.

Fame

You can’t be famous with only 10 regular visitors. The best way to be noticed and get return visits is to promote your site and write well and interestingly. So, where do you find your fans? First, from friends and families. If they find your blog worthy, they’ll do the promotion for you. But avoid the gossips as it may strain some relationships. You’ll never know who reads your blog. If you write using some alias and would not let any of your offline friends read your piece, you can still be famous. No one will look at your resume or some credential if you only write well and push your blog in the right places.

Advocacies

You have an important message to tell the world. How can your voice be heard without visitors? You need traffic so that your cause will not be lost. Knowing that someone reads what you have written is a motivation to write more.

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Now that you have your reasons, you also need to know where to get your traffic. Basically, traffic comes from three general sources: Direct, Referrers and Search engines.

Direct Traffic

These are those that type directly the URL address of you site in there browser. It could also be coming from persons who made your webpage as their home page. Like when they open their browsers, it’s your site that immediately appears. If you own an internet café, make your blog’s main page the browsers’ homepage. Direct traffic could also be coming from readers who bookmarked your site in their browsers. As for me, I have 80 sites bookmarked.

Referrals

When you leave your trace in someone else’s site and then they follow that link to your blog, then you have visitors coming from referrals. Examples are the link exchanges, commenting on other sites, directory submission, tags and memes, social networking sites, forums, contests, etc… If you request (if not demand) for ex-links in some 500 blogs, and 100 of them acceded to your request, then you have 100 sites that are possible sources of referrals. If you have a friendster site, post your link in the bulletin board.

Search Engines

If your site is indexed by google or some search engines, sooner or later someone else will find your site. The first ever commenter in my first-ever blog came from the search engines. She just typed ‘badminton’ in the google blog search. This is also the method I used when a friend challenged me to find her blog. I just typed a certain keyword, and there I found her blog.

To have plenty of visitors from search engines, one has to optimize certain keywords. If your advocacy is for the environment, then you optimize certain keywords that you think most readers search. If your blog is a diary, optimization will make it look awkward. But you can still do some search engine optimization for it.

However, there are people who just want to blog yet keep everything in private. One can use an alias. But when you become famous, some people would like to meet you and want to know the face behind the blog. Or you can just adjust some settings of your site by not allowing google to index it, then place some passwords so that only authorized people can view your site. If you ask why some people blog yet don’t want readers, the answer is secret. Only the blog owner knows.

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Tags: Web Traffic   Posted in Blogging, SEO